And This Is Life Eternal
Considering the God of our fathers is the God of Abraham (Gen 26:24, 31:42), Isaac (Gen 28:13, 32:9), and Jacob (Gen 48:15, Exo 2:24), also of Moses (Deut 26:7), Daniel (Dan 2:23), and Ezra (Ezr 7:27), and even the God of Jesus Himself (Joh 20:17), you would be right to assume that Christians should not only know whose God He is, but they should also know who He is. Well, it may surprise you that most don’t …maybe you’re one of them …I was.
Peter tells us who He is:
Act 3:13 The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his Son Jesus; whom ye delivered up, and denied him in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let him go.
The God of our Fathers is God the Father —the one true God of the Bible (Deut 6:4, 1Co 8:6, Eph 4:6)— a real divine Father with a real divine Son (Joh 16:27-28, Pro 8:22-23, 8:24-25, Joh 17:8), there is no proverb, parable, or figurative meaning implied (Joh 16:28-29). The widespread problem we have today is that most Christians will nod in agreement with the concept of a real Father and Son without understanding the implications of it being literal. For there to be a real father-son relationship there is no place for co-equal or co-eternal, and this is a huge problem.
Co-equal and co-eternal is a human construct designed to replace the biblical reality of a begotten Son. Jesus has always been the Son of God (Heb 13:8, 1:5). He is called the only begotten Son of God because He was the begotten Son before He came to our world (1Jn 4:10) …as it’s been said before, if God sent his Son then He already had a Son to send!
Look what the prophet Micah says:
Mic 5:2 But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.
This phrase ‘goings forth’ is the Hebrew word môtsâ’âh (H4163) which means ‘family descent’, or to ‘go forth out of’. So Jesus’ lineage (Heb 1:4) was from “everlasting”. He descended from His Father in eternity, or as the concordance states “time out of mind”. So to put it plainly, Christ was begotten of His Father in eternity past …at a time beyond our comprehension.
A lot of Christians balk at this because they’ve listened to the modern-day Pharisees. Like the Jews they’ve accepted what the doctors of divinity say, which is, if we say Christ is not co-equal and co-eternal then we take away His divinity and demote him to the status of created being. This is not so …in fact, for Jesus to be divine and God the Father to still be the only True God of the Bible (Joh 17:3) then Christ has to be a Son begotten in eternity (Joh 5:18). This will be demonstrated a little later in the study. Understanding the divine father-son relationship is the foundation of our salvation (Joh 17:3), and yet it’s a truth that’s either been obscured or abandoned.
The Bible plainly states that Israel’s history is a lesson for all professed Christians today (1Co 10:6, 10:11, Rom 15:4), even more than that, history is a symbol of what is to come (Gal 4:24-25), and spiritual Israel —Christians (Rom 2:28-29, Gal 6:15-16)— are walking the same path as did ancient Isreal.
Indeed, the LORD in His wisdom and mercy has directed history in such a way, that we, like little children (Joh 13:33, Gal 4:19, 1Jn 2:12), can learn from its repetition, so not only do we have prophecy to guide us (Jer 29:10, 29:11), we have history too (Ecc 1:9). We are told to pay attention to history and remember how God shaped it so we can understand the future (Isa 46:9-10, Ecc 3:15). Therefore, the fact that Israel continually forsook the God of their fathers for idols (Jdg 2:12, 2Ch 7:22, 2Ki 17:12) is typical of the Christian Church, who replaced the one true God and His begotten Son with a triune god, an idol that has its origin in paganism and witchcraft.
Image sources: flickr.com / onegodonelord.com / japanvisitor.com / artsandculture.google.com
The worship of the triune god is basically sun worship; let me show you how. The trinity was born out of the First Council of Nicaea AD 325, and was presided over by Emperor Constantine the Great. Now Constantine was supposed to have been converted to Christianity, but it’s obvious to anyone who examines the claims that he was marrying Christianity and Paganism for political and religious gain.
Like all pagans the Romans worshipped the sun god, and, just as Jehovah set aside a day for Him and His people, the seventh day Sabbath (Gen 2:2-3) —or a Saturday in our Gregorian calendar— the sun god has one set aside too; no prizes for guessing which day that is! This is why, in order to marry paganism and Christianity, they had to disguise the sun god and change Jehovah’s day from Sabbath to Sunday because obviously the sun god is worshipped on the day of the sun.
Another fitting illustration of how the New Testament church is in tandem with the old is in the rejection of Jesus (Joh 1:11). The Pharisees had taught the Jews to expect a warrior king like David (Mat 22:41-42, 12:23), someone to overthrow the Romans and give them back an earthly kingdom to rule over the earth. Jesus tried to denounce this teaching (Mat 22:41-42, 43-45, Mar 12:35, 12:36-37) but it had permeated the Hebrew mindset to such an extent that when Jesus told His disciples the temple would be destroyed they could only imagine it meant the end of the world (Mat 24:2, 24:3).
The Jews didn’t get the messiah they’d been taught to expect (Mat 16:6, 16:12, Joh 5:43), and because of this they chose Barabbas (Mar 15:11, Luk 23:18). The name Barabbas means ‘son of a father or master’, so it’s not that the Jews didn’t choose a son, they just chose the wrong son, but they did choose the one they wanted, and this carries a very meaningful lesson which we will come to shortly.
With all these things in mind we can look at a very important text in Malachi:
Mal 4:5 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD:
Mal 4:6 And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.
The great and dreadful day of the Lord is the second coming of Jesus Christ (Mal 4:1), and the Bible is telling us the Father will send Elijah before Jesus returns …but why Elijah? John the Baptist was also sent by the Father (Joh 1:33) to prepare the way for Christ’s first work on Earth (Isa 40:3, Joh 1:23), and Jesus called him Elijah (Mat 17:10-11, 12-13, 11:13-14). This shows us that the Elijah in Malachi chapter four, who will prepare the way for Christ’s second work (Isa 11:12, Mat 16:27, Rev 6:16), is not literally going to be the Elijah from the Old Testament (obviously), but rather someone, or more likely some group (1Ki 19:10, 1Ki 19:18) that will do a similar work to Elijah and John. Remember, God requires that which is past (Ecc 3:15), so if we can understand John and Elijah’s missions and combine them, we should be able to understand why he —or rather they— need to come again a third time.
Elijah wasn’t sent to convert nonbelievers, he was sent to Israel, his own people, to warn them they’d unwittingly replaced the God of their fathers with an idol (1Ki 18:17-18)! John was also sent the house of Israel to warn them (Mat 3:7, Luk 3:16, 3:17), and to help change their perception of the Messiah (Joh 1:15, 1:17, 1:29-30) because they were waiting for the ruler of an earthly kingdom (Mat 24:1, 24:2, 24:3), someone who would rescue them from the Romans rather than sin (Mat 1:21, Joh 18:35-36). In the minds of many Jews this false teaching disqualified Jesus as the Christ and led the mob to go along with the Pharisees in choosing Barabbas (Mat 27:20, Mar 15:11).
In both circumstances the leaders led the way into apostasy (Mat 16:11-12, 23:13, 1Ki 18:17-18) and the women behind the kings where the ones orchestrating the persecution (1Ki 18:13, 1Ki 19:1, 19:2, Mat 14:3, Mar 6:24 …an interesting allegory that we’ll deal with later), but the events that set the backdrop to the story of these two prophets and their missions reveal a lack of understanding in our time of who the Father and Son really are.
In Elijah’s story we see Israel worshipping a plurality —Baalim (1Ki 18:17-18) is the plural of Baal— and today we have the triune god, also a plurality, worshipped by the greater part of the Christian world. Three gods …God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, two of which are not biblical terms by the way …son of David and David the son mean two completely different things, I digress but think about it!
It’s not right to call it polytheism either because they are not really gods but persons, and not beings either but persons. One is three and three are one, a mystery (Rev 17:5) they say, and yet none of the apostolic church fathers believed in a triune god, and the trinity doctrine is not, and never was, a part of the Jewish religion.
1Th 5:4 For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
1Th 5:4 But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.